Secretary’s day getaway

As some sort of tradition all the secretaries of the RSM have a surprise getaway each year on secretary’s day. This time we were invited by the director of the Wereldmuseum for a lunch and of course, he had a hidden agenda and gave us a grand tour along all the conference rooms and their facilities. His main goal was to convince us to suggest to our bosses that the next time we have to organise a conference to go to the Wereldmuseum. And it has to be said, it’s a really wonderful old building with several nice rooms all with an amazing view on the Maas and the Erasmus Bridge. After this tour, which also included a part of the museum, we had a guide who was a bit weird. Or maybe this is normal for artistic people. I have to admit, I’m not really into art and for me all paintings are the same. I can see a whole museum in 30 minutes. When the guide finally decided we were finished with the tour we all went back to Cheryl’s wedding room to eat a really tasty lunch. First a salad with fresh tuna fish, which tasted wonderful and after this a truffle soup which I I didn’t taste. This was followed by small sandwiches with smoked salmon, chicken filet or “cheese “kloosterkaas”. 

This delicious food ended with a very nice dessert combination of coconut, chocolate mousse and something else. That something else was a jelly with a taste I cannot describe unfortunately. By then we were full. Our next step was to go to the Kookstudio 25 to prepare and eat (yes, you read it right food again) a High Tea. Luckily we had to drive for 20 minutes and because Ingrid was born and raised in Rotterdam she drove us there in her cute cabriolet.

Cheryl and I did the talking so Ingrid could keep her eyes on the road. After 30 minutes we were still driving but there was no sign of the Kookstudio. At that time my phone started beeping with incoming messages asking where we were. I will leave out the complete sightseeing part, and end it with; finally we arrived at the Kookstudio, 45 minutes late. We received a warm welcome with a Prosecco and a small bite to eat. In the meantime the master chef explained to us what was expected from us and how we could manage this. I have to say, it was funny and instructive and in the end we all managed to serve a really good home-made recipe from what we had to make. We all had different food to prepare; I made cupcakes together with Mariska. Cheryl and Myra were in charge of the sandwiches and so we had about ten different meals. After this cooking and baking we had to eat again.

Unfortunately, we were all not very hungry anymore so there were a lot of left overs. I forgot to ask what they do with all the good food afterwards. Lastly we had coffee or tea and then we received a bottle of Prosecco and so our annual secretary’s day out come to an end.